88 formant-who was unnamed in the ap- istration, the United States Customs plication-was Ricky Davis, and he Service, the United States Marshals, claimed that he had seen Edgar Price, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and one of Lenard Jackson's couriers, pay Firearms, the Army's Criminal Investi- Tindall a thousand dollars during a gation Division, the state Highway traffic stop in 1987 or 1988. "Affiant be- Patrol, the state police, the Texas Rang- lieves," wrote Shelton, referring to him- ers, and police departments and sheriff's self, "that Nathan Tindall was integrally offices in half a dozen nearby counties involved in providing protection to vari- and parishes, with helicopters thunder- ous cocaine dealers." He added that he ing overhead. Houses, taverns, trailers, suspected Tindall might be laundering and liquor stores were raided on the money for Husband and Arthur Watts strength of seventeen federal search through a local bank where he was then warrants. Property was seIzed and working. Shelton even managed to in- suspects were arrested on the basis of terpret Marvin McLeroy's report that three sealed federal indictments and Tindall had approached him about sixteen criminal complaints. In the Lenard Jackson's activities in 1987 as TV footage, burly agents swarm up evidence that Jackson must have started U.S. 96, brandishing automatic weapons paying off Tindall then. and shouting as they order frightened The additional wiretaps were autho- black people down on their faces in the rized, and the investigators, listening in mud. Lenard Jackson, who, with his from their trailer in the pecan orchard, wife, had attended the high -school continued to gather information on the graduation of a niece and a nephew up San Augustine drug trade. Some of the in Shelby County that afternoon, was dealers, although they were usually infu- stopped on the highway by a patrol riatingly vague and wary on the phone, car backed up by a helicopter. He was made some reasonably incriminating re- made to stand spread-eagled, his hands marks, but Nathan Tindall apparently on the hot hood of his Rolls- Royce, never said anything of interest. "I'm just a gun at his head. Dave Husband was lucky that Dave Husband and them oth- arrested at his store. Willie Earl Dade ers never had accounts at my bank," was found in his gir1fii.end's trailer, about Tindall told me. "Because if they did the to cook up a batch of cocaine-the only feds would have put that on me, called drugs actually found in the raid. Little it laundering." or no resistance was offered. The only In late May, the commanders ofOp- injury occurred when Blue Tick eration White Tornado decided that it Edwards, surprised in his trailer, tried was time to pounce. Betty to flee, and dislocated his Donatto was astonished. "I shoulder in the ensuing couldn't believe they wanted struggle. "Me and my wife to pull the cord then," she just been laying up in the says. "I had just worked my bed all day, using drugs and way up from the projects to . making love, and I didn't the Ranch, and I only needed I know what was going on," a couple more months. We" . ,\:' he said later. By nightfall, could have got n:ore on e I.' II: ' _..... thirty-one suspects had been Houston connectIon, LoUISI- ""hll taken into custody. Tindall, ana, the Colombians. Zack Shelton who had not been named in either the knew I thought it was too soon. But he indictments or the complaints, was not said Ricky Davis said the crooks were arrested. getting suspicious of me and were going Betty Donatto was there for the raid, to bump me off Except everybody knew but did little. "I was in a vehicle with that Ricky was a nervous wreck. He just some F.B.I. guys," she recalled. "And wanted the whole thing to end." they had every type of gun you can And so, late on the rainy afternoon of name. Machine guns, AK-47s. Of June 2, 1989, a vast paramilitary convoy, course, they didn't need all them guns complete with newspaper reporters and and dogs and a helicopter in little San TV camera crews, streamed into San Augustine. But I kept quiet. I just Augustine, carrying more than two hun- figured, This is really gonna make Larry dred heavily armed agents from the and his sheriff look good. That's what F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Admin- this is about." And on the courthouse THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 22 & 29, 1994 square that evening, watching the crowd applaud and the TV cameras jostle for position as a handcuffed Lenard Jackson was hustled into the jail, Donatto mar- velled at Charles Bryan's perfonnance. "Larry's sheriff:" who had been so firmly excluded from Operation White Tor- nado, was reaping the reward that Zack Shelton had promised him. "There he was, shaking hands and grinning and ac- cepting all the credit," Donatto recalled. "And I told my captain, Tom, who came up from Liberty County for the raid, 'I can't believe this.' At the end of the whole situation, I just had to give that man an Academy Award." N ATURALLY, Nathan Tindall said that if it had been up to him he'd have conducted Operation White T or- nado by telephone, just calling up the suspects and telling them to come on down to the jailhouse and bring their dope. He'd probably have got more dope that way than the pittance the feds found, too, he reckoned. Why did the feds stage the raid when they did? Ac- cording to Tindall, the answer was that they were nervous because he, Tindall, had just started work as an investigator for Charles Mitchell, the district attor- ney (who knew nothing about Opera- tion White Tornado), and they were afraid that he might break up the drug trade himself, stealing all their glory. As it happened, Mitchell let Tindall go im- mediately, reasoning that the former sheriff would not make an effective in- vestigator while under a cloud of federal SUspICIon. That cloud only darkened in the days after the raid, as veiled and not so veiled charges began to rain down on Tindall. Stuart Platt explained to reporters that Operation White Tornado had been necessary because local law enforcement in San Augustine had been "compro- mised." The F.B.I., during detention hearings in Beaumont for the White Tornado defendants, testified, according to the Beaumont Enterprlse, that "Tindall was difficult to work with and offered lIttle cooperation on drug inves- . . " tIgatIons. It seemed only a matter of time be- fore he would be indicted, his disgrace complete. On the day after the drug raid, Tindall was served with a federal court order to turn over the bank records of seven of the White Tornado suspects,